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<title>they were each other's toxic cure called codependency by nowhere_blake</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26376820">they were each other's toxic cure called codependency</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowhere_blake/pseuds/nowhere_blake'>nowhere_blake</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>codas for the damned and the brokenhearted [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(duh it's Sam and Dean), Codependent Winchesters (Supernatural), Episode: s14e01 Stranger in a Strange Land, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mary Winchester Finds Out About Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, POV Outsider, Quote: Sam and Dean Winchester are psychotically irrationally erotically codependent on each other, Sam is depressed and grieving, Sibling Incest, Unhealthy Relationships, it scares Mary a lot, kind of</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:02:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,172</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26376820</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowhere_blake/pseuds/nowhere_blake</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary’s back, Dean is gone and Sam stops sleeping. She thought she understood how deep her boys' relationship goes, but when Michael takes over and Dean disappears, she needs to reevaluate just exactly how scarily codependent the two of them are.</p><p>Coda to 14x01 Stranger in a Strange Land.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>codas for the damned and the brokenhearted [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1883758</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>263</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>they were each other's toxic cure called codependency</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title from Forever The Sickest Kids' <i>Nikki</i></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After Dean goes missing, Sam just sort of shuts down. Sometimes, when she watches him walk around the bunker, Mary thinks he’s barely a human anymore. It scares her more than anything.</p><p>It scares her even more than all the times she would see her boys standing too close to each other. It scares her more than the looks she’d notice, the soft noises of doors opening and shutting at night that she knows mean they sleep in the same bed more often than not.</p><p>It was easy to forget about it all in Apocalypse world, the imminent danger wiping away all other non-essential thoughts. But now… Sam looks like a person hollowed out from the inside. She catches the kind of desperation in his eyes that she saw in Dean’s when she first came back, and it was Sam who was missing, and Dean the one going insane. Sam’s more quiet rage and determination, none of Dean’s bark and reckless drinking, but just as much bite, if not more. Sam pushes himself to the edge and then further, no lead too small, no stone left unturned, like finding Dean was his religion, his only purpose. The only thing keeping him alive. Mary did think they were a little messed up before, but it turns out, she’d seen nothing yet.</p><p>She thought she knew all about it. Understood it, understood <em> them</em>, as much as she could attempt to. Her boys - too close, codependent, unhealthy and goddamn insane, arguably the best hunting team she’d ever seen, been through more crap than was imaginable. All kinds of complicated. But apparently when they were together, they were fine. <em> Well</em>. Functional. Compared to this especially, just Sam by himself, looking dead inside and a little lost, but like someone who could snap any minute. It’s painful to watch.</p><p>It’s like Dean took Sam’s will to live with him. He doesn’t laugh, barely says anything that is not about finding Dean or organizing the bunker, working cases. He goes through the motions, pretends to be strong for her. He’s still Sam, compassionate and attentive; he worries about Jack, he carries the weight of the world on his shoulder. And yet… He looks so empty all the time. If Mary didn’t know any better, she’d think he wasn’t even alive.</p><p>She knows she should feel sorry for him, and she does. But. She’s getting pretty sick of it too. Sam acting like he’s the only one Dean’s absence hurts, his brooding act poisoning every room he walks into. It’s almost like he thinks others don’t have that kind of pain, barely acknowledging that Mary is hurting too, the fact that she lost Dean, just like he did. Like maybe he thinks, he’s the only one with the <em> right </em>to hurt this deep over Dean.</p><p>They are a band of refugees, war escapees, and they all have nightmares, so it’s not unusual to hear someone scream at night. With all the insane Sam has gone through in his life, Mary wouldn’t be surprised to hear him too, especially now, with Dean missing. But there’s nothing. In fact, she doesn’t think Sam sleeps <em> at all</em>. Maybe in the car, in between leads and cases, she hopes. She <em> prays</em>. She sees him hover near the door to Dean’s room a few times, but he never goes in. She suspects maybe he’d sleep better there, or rest a little at least, surrounded by Dean’s things, in Dean’s (<em>their</em>?) bed, but she thinks maybe he’s punishing himself. Denying himself the comfort until they find Dean. That’s another thing that scares her.</p><p>How easily Sam gets down on himself, how ready he is to blame himself for everything and sacrifice it all just to make it right. It’s actually like she’s lost two sons instead of the one, Sam is already counting his own life as a future sacrifice, acting like he’s... well, not exactly dead already, but only temporarily alive. Expandable. It’s almost like Sam and Dean can’t be separated without damage; you tear one away, you hurt the other, you take one, and the other one almost ceases to function.</p><p>She wonders if it’s always been like this, if John had the same thoughts as they were growing up. Did he think it was too much, did he notice it too? Not that it matters, because even the idea of the two of them being less intertwined is laughable. Sure, they might fight and bicker sometimes, disagree on how to handle things, but Mary - who’s only really known them a year - already knows that it’s not an option. The two of them, her boys, they must exist <em>together</em>, so in sync, a sort of unit, like a knot you cannot possibly begin to untangle.</p><p>And even if she tried, what could she say anyway? You and your brother are a little too close for comfort? Maybe you wouldn’t hurt this bad right now, if you and Dean weren’t that codependent in the first place? Sam probably wouldn’t even understand - that closeness, it always seems so <em>normal</em> for them, it’s something they probably don’t even notice.</p><p>For the brief moment they were all back in the bunker, safe and together, it became even more obvious. Having all these people around made their intimacy stand out. And maybe it had to do with Sam dying and coming back, but they seemed to close ranks even more, as if these people were not refugees of an Apocalypse, but hordes attacking their home, their personal bubble of two, hell-bent on separating them.</p><p>Mary was busy, trying to answer questions, sort out sleeping arrangements and soothe grievances, but she noticed. It was hard not to. Their saviors, her boys, two tall and broad men, who rarely wandered out of touching distance of each other. How protective Sam was of Dean’s neatly kept kitchen, how he wouldn’t let anyone cause a mess. Dean threatening someone with bodily harm if they dared touch Sam’s laptop. It was stupid things, but obvious things, and people raised eyebrows, questioned their habits, shot looks Mary’s way. Her boys though? They either didn’t notice or just simply didn’t care. Maybe they were just used to it, she thought, which was somehow even worse.</p><p>Not that there was any conceivable way to separate them really, no matter how uncomfortable it sometimes made her. Maybe when they were younger… Although probably not even then. What little she knew from the stories they told her and from John’s journal, they’d always been just as aggressively protective of each other as they were now.</p><p>At first she thought it sweet, she was even proud of the way they took care of each other. But there were certain things. The kind of things all the others noticed, the things she’d seen too. Nothing concrete; they were good at hiding it if there was anything <em> more </em> going on. (Did they have <em> practice </em> at it? Mary thought and then: <em> Oh, John. </em> A little pitying feeling, and guilt for leaving him alone to deal with this, for giving him sons like <em>this</em>.) And Mary really didn’t want to think about that, about <em> more</em>, although rationality told her it was very likely. She was certain they slept in the same bed after all. No, she never caught them at doing anything brothers weren’t supposed to. But it was the little things.</p><p>Things they didn’t bother to hide, because they didn’t think they had to or maybe didn’t even realize were incriminating. Their little dance of making breakfast in the mornings, like some sort of perfectly coordinated choreography, never bumping into each other, no need for communication. Sam was handing Dean the butter before he even reached for it, Dean opened the fridge for Sam before Sam even took a step towards it.</p><p>Then there was the way they fought about things. Not like brothers at all, but more like a married couple who knew each other so well they didn’t even need to say all the words. There were half-sentences and single-word exclamations that made no sense to Mary, but seemed to land punches gut-deep, looks that got meaning across somehow better than long-winded explanations ever could. Most of the time, she barely even knew what the argument was about - for all she understood of their shared language, it could have been about anything from what takeout to get, to how to go about killing Lucifer.</p><p>At first she kept thinking, she’d maybe missed something. A future thing that she didn’t get. Her boys shooting meaningful looks and snarling seemingly random words at each other. She would look at Castiel for help, as stoic as ever, perhaps a little more exasperated than usual.</p><p>‘What are they fighting about?’ she would ask, but to her utter surprise Castiel - who generally had an all-knowing sort of air - would just shrug, like he didn't know either, like he was used to it.</p><p>Mary remembers asking him once, frowning, ‘Do they do this a lot?’</p><p>A knowing glance, a spark of acceptance in his eyes, then something like annoyance, but maybe also love. Something complicated on the so often emotionless face. But then a deep sigh and a one-word answer that told Mary more than she bargained for: ‘Yes.’</p><p>It took Mary's breath away, that deep understanding in Castiel's voice that meant confirmation, like he was answering a different question, one that Mary was too scared to ask. A mother's worst nightmare, she thought then, but it turned out she was wrong, not even close. Worst nightmare was the haunted look in Dean's eyes as he walked into their compound in Apocalypse world and Mary asked him where Sam was. Worst nightmare was her boys missing for weeks, not knowing where they were, if they were even alive. She thought she loved them less because of how they were, because of <em>who</em> they were together, but then she put a gun to her head to honor the deal they made with Billie, barely any hesitation, just to keep them alive. At the end of the day, no matter how much it scared or disgusted her, they were still her boys.</p><p>Now, in the car, on a dark, wet road, Mary considers this. Studies the shadowy, lost look in Sam’s eyes. He looks tired. He looks like he’s grieving. He looks <em>dead</em>. She wants to scream at him, because he’s not the only one. She’s had enough of him acting like no one else in the world could possibly understand. She tells him as much.</p><p>‘I know. I know he’s out there - scared and alone. I know. I know he might never come back. Never think I don’t know that. But I can’t- I have to think about the good, Sam, because if I don’t, I will drown in the bad. For Dean’s sake, I can’t do that. <em> We </em> can’t do that.’</p><p>She tries to yank him out of it. Instill some hope in him. She knows she doesn’t get through, not really. He’s too deep in sorrow. He’s too lost. He’s missing a part of him and he’s too empty to have the ability to hope to ever get it back.</p><p>It kills Mary to see him like that. Like her own grief wasn’t enough, she gets to deal with Sam’s on top of it all too. She watches him fight and be strong for her, put on an act. She watches him kill a demon, frighten another three into submission, and she thinks… He’d do<em> anything</em>.</p><p>And now, she's not just scared, she's terrified. She heard the stories, so she knows some of it. The extent that they’d go to, that they <em> have </em>gone to, just to save each other. It’s different to actually see it though, have a first row seat. It’s a kind of possessive light right there in her child’s eyes, shining bright, like unshed tears.</p><p>On their way back to the bunker, she doesn’t look at Sam, can’t bear it. She sits in the car - Dean’s car, seeing Sam behind the wheel is already sort of wrong and it <em> hurts </em>- and looks out into the rain, just so she doesn’t have to look at her grieving son.</p><p>She shivers when she realizes that maybe she was wrong. Maybe what Sam feels can’t compare to what any of them feel, maybe he <em> is </em>alone in this. (Perhaps Castiel comes close, but only just.) She can’t possibly know what that feels like, losing a chunk of your being, losing a part of your soul so big, you barely see the point of living anymore. Like an actual limb being torn out, so you feel helpless, raw, in pain. Except worse. Like completely losing function in half of your body, like having a gaping, fiery hole, right where your heart should be. She can’t imagine feeling like that and surviving, living, functioning. Not for this long. She swallows back the bile and shuts her eyes. They need to find Dean. The sooner the better.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I miss the good old days when we'd all scream in all caps on the dashboard liveblogging every episode, so come say hi on tumblr <a href="https://princessconsuelapark.tumblr.com">@princessconsuelapark</a> 🌷</p><p>buy me a <a href="https://www.buymeacoffee.com/nowhereblake">coffee</a> if you feel like ☕</p></blockquote></div></div>
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